One of the bad parts of high school is having to talk to the teachers and administrators. A worse part, though, is the dread that anticipates that conversation. It is much like the feeling you get before the date will most certainly lead to sex: a lump in the throat, lightheadedness, impatience. Only before you have to talk to that teacher, the giddiness and guilty, exciting feeling of arousal are no longer there. Only dread. You want it to end. When it does, you go away shaken.

Andrew could not even guess why he was in the headmaster's office. He hadn't done anything wrong. He went to a small prep school so the teachers knew him well; Andrew knew that he was well-liked by the faculty. "I must have pissed them off really bad, but how?" he thought.

Mr. Jackson shut the door behind him when he walked in. He was a thin, high-strung man with an almost effeminate voice. His coffee-fueled energy unnerved Andrew, and lots. He creeped out everyone he met, actually, but he had that inescapable preppy charisma that earned him respect.

"helloandrew." Jackson was no longer in the business of speaking Standard Recieved English. If he had less than a liter of coffee before 11 am, he went through withdrawl. However, the double-edged sword of coffee dictated that Jackson was guaranteed to forever speak in machine gun sentences that vibrated and buzzed like -- well, like a fucking vibrator, frankly. Occasionally he would end sentences with a brief, nasal "heh heh heh" of a laugh, and begin them with an equally short "ahh," which was the sound of his throat opening.

"Hi, how are you today?" Andrew said, polite as always.

"justfinethankyouhehehheh. ahhdoyouknowwhyyou'vebeensummonedheretoday?"

"No, I don't."

"areyousure?" Jackson's "sure" ended with a muted, almost silent yet still elongated "ahh," like a tape recorder abruptly running out of batteries, which was uncharacteristic of Jackson, considering his speed-freak like aura.

"I have no clue whatsoever. Seriously."

"ohwellokayandrewthat'sfine. ahhthethingisson, aparentcomplainedtothecounsellingdepartmentthatyoumightbeathreatoyoursafetyandtheschool's."

"A threat? Uh...why?"

"thisparentreadoneofyourstoriesthathissonshowedhim..."

Andrew's mouth went dry instantly. He knew the whole story in less than a second.

A few months earlier, he had written a story about a high school in which classes were cancelled early because of a massive snow storm. In it, some of the students start a massive snowball fight, which leads to a brawl involving football players, culminating in a stabbing. The tone of the story was bitter. Andrew based it on an actual day when his school declared early dismissal; The day when his mother took especially long to pick him up, and he stood on the school's front lawn watching big, beefy jocks hit eachother with snowballs and blocks of ice -- calling each other "faggot" and generally being violent. They didn't get in trouble at all, yet kids at the same school were yelled at for wearing trenchcoats, as if your clothing defined your personality: Jane wears designer clothing in pink and green, so she's normal. Dick wears black t-shirts. He must listen to a lot of "goth" music and own illegal firearms. Never mind that Jane is bulemic and drinks alcohol on the weekends despite the fact that she's only fourteen, and that Dick is a well-behaved if quiet young boy who actually wears black because it doesn't show dirt, and listens to Link Wray.

But Andrew really didn't intend to write an editorial on all of that shit. He wrote about the day through his own eyes, and what he saw angered him. He wrote a story in which those that harm others go unpunished. He printed it out and showed it to his friend Rich. He must have left the copy in Rich's room. Rich wouldn't show his dad, his dad probably found it while searching the room for drugs and porno books. The man was exactly the kind of douchebag that would see "danger" and "Threats" in everything, as he viewed the world through a thick pair of paranoia goggles. He didn't like Andrew either, so he had extra incentive to show the authorities the story: Not only was it violent, bitter, and containing the phrase "there was blood in the snow," but it had Andrew's full name, handwritten neatly as could be in blue ink right there at the top of the page.

What Jackson told him was pretty much what he expected. Rich's dad took the story to the guidance counsellor during parent-teacher conferences, and the guidance counsellor told Jackson, who called Andrew into the office.

Andrew was irate, mostly because of Rich's asshole dad and his dad's asshole hobbies, but also because the school took the man seriously.

"Well, I assure you I'm not going to shoot anyone," Andrew said. He was trying to hide how irked he was. He was pulling it off fairly well.

"wellihavenodoubtaboutthat," Jackson said. Jackson was lying. Andrew could tell. Through the collage of syllables that Jackson vomited, Andrew heard a good amount of trust -- but still percieved an edge of doubt in the headmaster's voice. There was maybe even lurking fear. "ahhbutstillandrewwe--theadministration--wantyoutotalktoacounselor. afterallthereisagreatdealofangerbehindthisstory."

"Well, alright."

"ok.listeni'vearrangedatimeforyoutomeetwithmr.gingrich," said Jackson.

Jack Gingrich was an irritating 27-year-old guiance counselor. Even though his job required pristine "people skills," he seemed to have a forced, nervous friendliness which really gave all the students who talked to him the creeps. Andrew was no exception.

"You see, Andrew, I'm not here to punish you. The administration is really concerned about your safety in particular, as well as the safety of others. Okay?"

Having to sit through lecture and questioning from such a non-entity was a subtle form of punishment. To the school's credit, they didn't automatically expel him; They did want to rehabilitate him in a sense, perhaps in the worst, most self-righteous way. To Andrew, it was not okay. Yet he had no choice but to say: "Yeah."

And so the dialouge began.

"I've read the story," said Jack. "I liked it, frankly." He lied.

"Thank you."

"It's kinda angry. I sense that you wrote this because you were angry."

"I guess it is. I dunno. Like..." Andrew trailed off. How the fuck was he supposed to respond to this?

"You seem like a good kid on the outside, Andrew, but it's what's inside that counts. It's okay to tell me if you're angry."

"Well, I'll admit that the story is kinda negative and all, but I don't feel like I'm an angry person. I mean, we all get angry sometimes --"

After Andrew spoke the last sentence, Jack began furiously writing notes on his legal pad. "What do you mean by 'We,' exactly?" he asked.

Andrew was caught totally off-guard. "Uhh...I just meant people in general. You know? Human beings?"

Jack stared at him briefly and said simply "Oh" before scribbling out what he had just written. Before the notes were completely eradicated, Andrew tried reading them. It looked like it said: "multiple personalities?"

Oh my God, Andrew thought to himself, this jackass thinks I'm crazy! What a dick! HE'S NOT EVEN A GODDAMN DOCTOR!

Jack continued the questioning.

"What sorts of things make you mad? Like, are you being teased?"

"Sometimes I get teased, yeah, but it doesn't really make me angry, you know?"

"Do, you know, people you might call "jocks" make fun of you? In the Locker room during gym or anything like that?"

"Some have, I guess."

"You guess? Because, there's a lot of hatred against athletes in this story..."

"Well, I don't hate them or anything. The story is just about a snowball fight."

"...In which jocks are involved."

"Yeah."

"And in which a boy is stabbed."

"Uh huh."

"And all this takes place at a high school."

"I wrote the story, so I know."

Jack inhaled deeply and then sighed. Andrew shifted in his seat. The chair was made of wood and his ass had fallen asleep. His brain would soon follow, or so he thought. Perhaps it would have had Andrew not had the scrap of patience that he clung to so desperately, like the last grappling hook that leads to hell's exit. Only the rope tied to the grappling hook was very, very, long and climbing up it meant being attacked by venomous bats and pissant guidance counselors.

The pause continued and Andrew began to daydream. First, he examined Jack's face out of the corner of his eye. Is this sonofabitch an albino, or just really Irish? he thought. He drifted into thought about a really cute girl in his physics class. She was a bitch with a horrible attitude but at least she looked really good in hip-hugging jeans.

Jack started talking again."I'm confused right now, Andrew. See...you seem really calm right now, but the story you wrote feels like it was written by a very angry and bitter individual."

"I know. The narrator was really mad. Like, if you saw people getting sliced up over a snowball fight, wouldn't you be, too?"

"Well, if people were harmed for any reason I'd be upset. This is why we're having this talk, okay? I don't want you to hurt anyone because you're mad."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone, seriously." He had to say it, so it came out sounding forced -- which was bad.

"I believe you. I don't believe you'd hurt anyone, but I still just sense that you were very angry when you wrote this."

"Maybe I was. I don't know."

"So you think that writing these stories is sort of like stress-relief?"

"Yeah, I guess." Andrew thought about this admission later on in the day. He didn't pay close attention in class. He didn't do homework. He didn't watch much television. He mostly wrote light poetry and short stories. It was what he did a lot of the time, and it was neither a cause of, nor a solution to stress. In any case, he had lied to an authority figure, so -- even in the wake of what happened after he and Jack were finished talking -- he felt like a small victory had been won.

"I'd like to believe you, but I sense that you're getting kind of cross right now. Your answers are really curt."

Andrew had taken enough. It was as though two cars had crashed inside his mind, sending glass shards of hate all throughout his skull, the sawdust smell of the airbags making him dizzy with pissed-offness. "Yeah, I am. I am mad. I'm not in this office for a good reason. I've told you people repeatedly: 'I'm not going to kill anyone, I'm not going to kill anyone,' can't you just give me the benefit of the doubt? I mean, Christ, all I did was write a story about A GOD DAMNED SNOWBALL FIGHT, and no one here believes that it's just that! They think I'm going to fucking come in here with a rifle and start taking people out because of what I wrote! You think I'm going to march my ass in here dual-wielding pistols, target jocks and shit. And why? Because of a fucking story.

"And the story isn't even about some pissed off kid going psycho! You know who does all the hurting in the story? JOCKS. IT'S JOCKS TARGETING JOCKS, NOT 'GEEKS' OR 'OUTCASTS.' OTHER JOCKS. THESE TESTOSTERONE FUCKERS BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ONE ANTOHER DAILY, BUT NO ONE DOES SHIT! THEY COME TO ME BECAUSE I WRITE ABOUT IT. And yeah, Jack, I'm mad! I'm mad because YOU PEOPLE ARE SO CLOSED MINDED AND QUICK TO JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS BECAUSE YOU FIND CERTAIN THINGS IN YOUR LIFE TO BE 'UNPLEASANT.' For the last time, I'M NOT GOING TO HURT ANYONE, ALRIGHT?! KILLING IS FUCKING WRONG, JACK! I DON'T BELIEVE IN IT! WILL YOU FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE DO YOUR GODDAMN JOB AND LISTEN TO ME?! I'M NOT GOING TO HURT ANYONE!!!"

The secretary in the next room had stopped typing. Down the hall, a statistics class had ground to a halt and the teacher was standing in the hallway, facing the direction of Jack's office. Some kid in that class recognized the screaming voice, and smirked to himself. "I always knew that fag would go nuts one day," he thought.

Jack had gone even more pale than he already was. He had pissed himself ever so slightly. With a trembling hand, he picked up the phone.

Andrew was not officially under arrest. It was standard operating procedure to handcuff him anyway as he was taken to jail for questioning. Mr. Jackson had called the police before he even called Andrew into his office. They searched his bedroom and found an old hunting knife buried in his closet. It was dusty from disuse, and had a sherriff's deputy not picked it up, it would have remained as such.

A squad car was already on it's way to the school to pick Andrew up when by chance Jack Gingrich had called campus secuirty to detain Andrew.

People stared at Andrew as he was lead out of the building. The sky was cloudy. Another underwhelming Pennsylvania afternoon. Hippy girls smoked mentholated cigarettes in the parking lot. One knew Andrew. She brushed her dirty blonde hair out of her face and adjusted her glasses. In a display of hippy-blackface she gave him the peace sign. "Good luck, Andy," she said. He nodded at her in acknowledgement as the cop pushed his head down so it didn't smack the doorway of the cruiser.